Tag: ow. ow. ow.

Pride (?) of Ownership

Bobbie1 Comment

I have once again ventured into the land of Personal Training (receiving end). This is the third time and I hope it works like a charm, as the first one I worked with 4 years ago seemed disinterested (possibly a reflection of my attitude of “I’m paying you so my work is done here”), the second one found all the things I didn’t like and increased them in proportion (I hate kettle bells).

Up until now my ventures into physical activity consisted of the following process:

  1. I need to lose weight.
  2. I don’t make time for the gym.
  3. Unless I have paid for an event.
  4. If I’m going to pay for an event it should be a “big” thing.
  5. Which event has enough credibility and pressure?
    1. Half Marathon
    2. 200 mile bike ride
  6. Register for event.
  7. Feel pumped about event.
  8. Figure training schedule for event.
  9. Skip some days but don’t worry I’ll make it up.
  10. Train in earnest.
  11. Injure myself during training because I didn’t ramp properly.
  12. Ignore or marginalize injury because I’m in denial.
  13. Do event. Maybe whine a lot. Maybe get a little irrational.
  14. Injure myself during event and/or exacerbate injury from training.
  15. Go to Physical Therapy. Go Directly to Physical Therapy.
  16. Have PT person:
    1. Shake head
    2. Remind me of the last time We Were Together, Ask if I’ve Been Doing My Exercises
    3. Hand me New Exercises
    4. Graduate me 2-3 months later
    5. We both know we’ll see each other again.
  17. Celebrate my newfound physical wellness by “taking a break”.
  18. Gain weight. Go back to #1.

The part of this cycle I’m trying to break is numbers 2, 9, 12, and 17.  Hence, Personal Trainer.

My Personal Trainer’s name is Dave. Dave is a former Marine Corps Drill Instructor and acts like it, which is good, but he’s also pretty cheerful at points and is sensitive to the random pains that come with arthritic knees. Dave managed to work me out so hard the first two days that I was actually sore in my armpits. Did you know you have muscles there? I did not… until they were sore. Or there was the time I coughed and my stomach muscles hurt…

This process started about three weeks ago and it’s fairly predictable – while I’m using MyFitnessPal to log all of my food (for the most part honestly), I’m typically tracking more calories than I ought to have, and usually due to the end-of-day meal. I’m also (theoretically) increasing my muscle mass, and since muscle weighs more than fat, my weight hasn’t gone down materially. *

The part that I’m proud of though is that, for more than 21 days (23 as of yesterday) I have made it to the gym 6 days out of each week – at least 3 runs and at least 3 weight workouts. My knees have managed to make it through 32 minutes of running with one, 1-minute break; there’s only minimal swelling and it’s gone at end of day. I’ve also noticed if I don’t run or work out (e.g., that 7th day) I’m a bit of a princess crankypants. I am taking all of these as good signs and hoping the adage that “21 days  makes a habit” is true.

And I haven’t signed up for any events, thank you.

*Actually muscle does not weigh more than fat, any more than a pound of gold weighs more than a pound of feathers, because a pound is a pound is a pound. However, the DENSITY of muscle is higher than that of fat, so the VOLUME required to make 1 pound of muscle is smaller than the VOLUME required to make 1 pound of fat – which is how come the inches go away long before the scale registers anything.

Counting One’s Blessings

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“At least you have your health!” — often said when one is disparaging one’s fate, usually accompanied by the statement one should count one’s blessings.

My health took a brief holiday on Tuesday night, having (correctly) assessed everything else was going very well so it may as well take its turn. It started with the usual sore throat — and then, as my son puts it, you feel like you swallowed sand. Then you get the fever. And then a wet cough that punctuates every third word.

Three days later you’re still pretty much there. There was one brief respite where the fever had broken and I felt better, I now feel like that was likely the result of DayQuil and not actual healing. Now it appears the fever has broken (again) and I’m hopeful, as this time I can talk more before the racking cough, and the joint pain is subsiding.

One of the most frustrating things about being sick is that you take time off of work (if you can, and you should if you can) so you can heal up. As a result, you look at this startlingly clear calendar, this wide-open schedule, and fantasize about all the things you could do! You could — garden! You could sew, you could catch up on those books, you can reconfigure your pantry, you can …

…oh, no you can’t. Because you’re sick. So while your BRAIN is perfectly capable of envisaging these things, and of planning and plotting and wanting to go do them, your BODY is calling you four-letter words, aching at every joint, and requiring obscene amounts of sleep. In the space of 24 hours I used up an entire box of kleenex (plus five individual packs); in the space of the last 4 days I exhausted the remaining supply of tea and honey. I’ve lost four pounds (silver linings, anyone?) I am both BEHIND and AHEAD at work because I’ve done everything I can that didn’t require me to talk — because I couldn’t — but now I need to make up all that talking time with a voice that sounds like I’ve been sucking on helium and pickles.

This is okay thought. Because it appears I can once again count my health.

Editing

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As part of that non-work, non-home, non-PTA poo I previously referenced, I’m knee-deep in documents: big documents, little documents, documents that climb on rocks. Documents that must be scanned, annotated, pdf’d, and emailed. As a result of this — which, I must note, has lasted four weeks now and shows zero signs of letting up — I have learned many things:

1. People who have presumably gone through enough college to acquire a JD are still susceptible to amazingly huge gaffes in grammar, logic, and facts. This is not my person, but someone else’s person, and the fact that this person makes as much as he does makes me weep for the MFA’s of the world. Those sorts of leaps of logic/creative spellings should reside firmly with unicorns, fairies, and unpronounceable pseudo-worlds.

2. My boyfriend’s bulimic cat can immediately sense these, and will puke in disgust (I’d totally join her, but the carpet cleaner couldn’t handle it).

3. The household HP Scanner will lovingly scan each document as an INDIVIDUAL jpeg, to be hand-converted to pdf, and oh you have to rotate them 180 degrees (sure, you could try to feed your documents 180 degrees differently — and discover the HP Scanner then becomes bulimic of its own accord).

4. There is no easy (read: free) software for annotation, so I must send my [descriptive noun redacted] a detailed, bulleted email about the scanned documents. She loves this (at slightly under $300 an hour), but it goes against my norm of power-point “SmartArt”, and I end up involuntarily twitching.

5. The household Scanner is not on the network (still), and so I must do the weird braille method of re-attaching its USB connection to the male person’s machine.

6. Waiting for the aforementioned household scanner will cause you to read your Facebook feed with more interest than you have had in a few weeks, and you will therefore discover Wil Wheaton Collating, making your mind both euphoric and in danger of its own personal Warp Core Breach.

7. All of those people? Who you kinda told but didn’t really about the poo, and the stress, and the non-eating-sleeping-and-general-bowel-dysfunction (oh, wait, TMI)? They totally meant it when they said they were pulling for you, as evidenced by the forty-two customized email messages through various media inquiring as to status of poo and whether poo was in fact, gone.

For the record:

The poo is kinda gone…the stench lingers… and after October 19th I’ll officially hope the fan has kicked in. Really could’ve used a courtesy flush, but it didn’t happen.

In other news, it’s 16 days to my birthday, can I get a pony?

Hoopty

Bobbie4 Comments

I feel like every doctor’s appointment comes with additional hoops.

I went to my prescribed bike fitting, to discover that the first hour was just about the seat- it’s height and it’s tilt and it’s forward/backness, and how it will likely need to be replaced. I need to book a 2nd hour for the handlebars, and I likely need a new stem. The first hour also included 1.5 degree inserts for my shoes (I swear, I am not making this up) to help align my knees (dude, she brought out “lasers”). I spent an hour on a bike in a trainer getting on, getting off, having her tweak it, or having her tweak my shoes, and getting back on, repeat…

Also, I am allergic to something that is in the leukotape I use to tape my kneecaps. My left knee in particular is red and swollen, and I need to now douse it with Milk of Magnesia before I tape to avoid this sort of break out. Fun!

The Physical Therapist (aka, Personal Torturer or Pain and Torturer) is a whole ‘nother ball of wax. Let me state  that these folks are preternaturally cheerful, and I was initially handled (no, not physically but more atmospherically) by a Kinesiology student we’ll call Puppy. Puppy had me do all kinds of silly walks with a rubber band — most of which are designed to strengthen your muscles (hellO, weak ass!) — and then I had to spend 2 minutes on each side of my legs “massaging” out my IT band. Lest this sound fun, I want you to imagine this: Take a hard foam roller — I mean, really hard. As in, it does not give. Then put your ample body weight on it, in a painful spot. Then roll it slowly back and forth across the painful spot, until you are absolutely sure that your legs are the blossoming purple that is the University of Washington’s color.

Then have a PT take her elbow, and press, hard, against it, for another minute or two. Have her do this to the extent that you remember your Lamaze breathing, and you are gnashing your teeth and trying NOT to scream. Because, as we all know, this kinda freaks other people out.  Then have her point out you need to do the rolly-thingy at home (please go purchase the $22 roller first) every day. Don’t worry, after 2 weeks the pain goes away.

Then have them hook up your most painful bits (aka, your left knee) to an electrode. Again.

Only to discover that the more stressful parts of work actually MAKE YOU FORGET YOU HAVE ELECTRODES ATTACHED TO YOUR PAINFUL BITS.

Let me further clarify: Reading Work Email Kept My Mind Off Of Therapeutic Electrocution.

This next week is follow-up with the doctor, another bike fitting, two more PT sessions, and a final sojourn to the Foot Zone.  If I can just get through all of these hoops… I can do more next week :p

Weak Ass

Bobbie2 Comments

In honor of my hundredth post, I give you the latest and greatest on my Adventures in Healthcare. 

This Wednesday I found myself getting XRays in Kirkland. I highly suggest you invest in Philips (PHG) as they apparently outfit every machine in that office, including the XRay machines. The technician was all work and no play right up until the end, when she handed me the “customer feedback” form: then I got a smile. I’m not judging, I know people can be a pain and I’m sure I was just one of many bodies she’d have to fry that day. They did give me an awesome lead triangle-shaped apron to wear to protect my ovaries, so that’s good.

The XRays are to discover if there’s anything ELSE wrong with my knees (than what have been discovered thus far), and if I do indeed have a left leg longer than my right. I’m kind of excited to know, it will make for a great conversation starter at a party. I just need to know the precise delta for full effect. Here’s hoping I get it in millimeters or centimeters or what have you.

Shortly after XRays I went to my first Physical Therapy appointment, where there were no Bulgarian Split Squats but there was a lot of IT Band massaging (which is not as fun as it sounds), some electrode-wielding (I think I posted about that already, yes it was painful, yes I have to keep doing it), and some McConnel taping tutorial (basically: tape my kneecaps to where they’re SUPPOSED to be and that will train the muscles around them to behave as they should so essentially they’ll eventually go where they’re supposed to be on their own. I think.)

The appointments continue: there’s a bike fitting appointment, an orthotic fitting appointment, 12 more physical therapy appointments, a follow up doctor visit, and that is just if the Xrays do NOT find anything new. There will also have to be new running shoe buying, for which I have a chart completed by the PT, and I plan to indicate all the fun of shopping at FootZone. I hate shopping.

For those interested: the official diagnosis, thus far, is Patellofemoral Syndrome, and Patellar Tendinitis. Other comments from the PT:

  • My Iliotibial Band (IT Band) is so tight you can twang it.
  • I have a weak gluteus medius and a weak gluteus maximus (translation? I have a weak ass, because my quads and hamstrings have been doing all of the work)
  • My patella tracks laterally instead of neutrally

Of course, all I hear is that I have a weak ass.

Give Me Money. Again. Please.

Bobbie7 Comments

I’ll be running (walking, limping) in the American Lung Association’s 5k run this coming May 1st. This is one of those “get people to donate money” things, and last year I had the amazing incentive of annoyance plus the ability to have people sign my helmet for the Ride.

This year, options considered for fundraising included shaving my head. However, that was vetoed by Man and Boy, and so instead I found something far more temporary: a tattoo.

Specifically many tattoos (hopefully), of the 30-day Henna variety. The week before the race I’m engaging a henna artist to tattoo slogans, pictures, names, etc. — whatever is wanted, as long as it is PG — on my limbs and upper back for the race. At the $25 level, of course.

And you, too, can be a part of it. You can even *watch* as I plan to tweet the proceedings 🙂

But, you need to donate money. Here’s where you do that: http://action.lungusa.org/site/TR/RunWalk/ALAMP_Mountain_Pacific?px=4415558&pg=personal&fr_id=2590 

I may even come up with fancier incentives for fancier money 🙂

An Open Letter of Apology to My Spin Class Instructor… the New One

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Dear Instructor Deb,

I know I’m not in class right now, and you need to know what happened, because I LOVE your class. I love the music (that remix of Stevie Wonder’s Superstitious? the one with the Indian drums and guitars? Is AWESOME!). I love you (in a totally platonic, non lesbian way). I love the new bikes. I love the old bikes. You have singlehandedly (or double wheeldly) made me love the gym.

And I’m not there today. I won’t be there next week, either.

I went to a Sports Medicine Doctor today. I went there, because last weekend after finishing up an hour on the bike I decided, HEY! I totally signed up for a 5k in May, I should see what I can do on the treadmill. After three steps– at 5mph, we’re not talking fast– it really did feel like someone was stabbing me in the knee. This is not good, you will totally agree, so I decided to see a sport medicine doctor. My Sport Medicine Doctor — Madame le Docteur, actually, as she is Quebeqois — is awesome. I totally stole her from my friend Kevin. At any rate, today was my appointment with Madame le Docteur.

Madame le Docteur first asked me about symptoms, so I told her about the last two half marathons, and the triathlon, and the giving up running in early 2010, and the attempt at running. I told her about pain-free cycling, about painful cycling, and about how much I love my ibuprofen. I told her about the spectacular crunching noises my knee makes going downstairs but not up, about how I feel cold in my knees. She asked me when I started feeling pain and I said about 3-6 months ago, I noticed after a good hard spin class I’d be a bit swollen and it would be a bit tender. She raised a Gallic eyebrow and looked at me: “You mean to say, you knew you had pain in your knees, and you decided then to run?” I totally felt like I was in school.

Madame le Docteur (ok, we’re going to refer to her as MlD, for ergonomic’s sake) next instructed me to put on a pair of shorts. As I didn’t come equipped with any, she handed me a pair of oversized men’s boxers– printed with Spongebob Squarepants. I knew I liked her when I entered her office and saw it very zen, with draperies and cool paint colors and I wasn’t one of fifteen people she was seeing that hour. But when she handed me the Spongebob? I knew I liked her.

She tsk’d tsk’d over my pronation (known to me) and after various assessments (the sounds my left knee make are painful to hear, even for MlD, and she made me stop after 1/2 of one lunge), she declared:

  • It is highly likely my left leg is longer than my right
  • I am highly over pronated
  • The orthodic inserts assigned to me from my former Podiatrist are crap
  • I need six weeks of physical therapy, 2x/week, at minimum
  • That my last round of physical therapy was NOT what you do if you want to keep your knees. Those Bulgarian Split Squats? Yeah, those aren’t cool.
  • I need a bike fitting
  • I need new orthodics (duh)
  • I need Xrays
  • I need to learn how to McConnel tape my kneecap
  • I may not exercise (bike or run) without taping first
  • I have to wear an anti-inflammatory patch on my knee 24×7 for at least a week. This is different from what they’ll put on there in physical therapy.

And now the good news: I will be able to do STP. As long as I do what she says.

“We are going to make you work very hard”, she said in her stern french accent. “If you want it you will need to work for it.” Well.  I certainly will have to.

If only to make all of the @%(^#*$ appointments.  But let the record state: I really love M. le Docteur. Oui.

Full Contact Pilates

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There’s a class here at my fancy gym called “Group Cyntergy”. The idea is to combine Pilates and Yoga, and put it to music, and do it with a bunch of other people. Harmless suburban exercise, right?

My Cyntergy class is run by a lovely lady named Michelle, who is twenty years my senior (guestimating from the skin around her eyes) but looks about ten years older (guestimating from the rest of her physique). Random facts she’s shared in class lead me to believe my former guestimate is correct. She could kick anyone’s ass.

In class she does.

There are all of these moves — it’s like a game of deranged twister. I mean, take your left foot, and put it in front of you. Crouch down in a lunge, with your right foot far back. Take your left hand, extend it down and to the right as far as you can. Take your right hand, extend it ceilingward as far as you can. Got that? Now hold it. Hold it while your muscles begin to shake, and then reverse the pose, exchanging your lefts with your rights. Repeat. Ok now do it faster.

Then listen to some Red Hot Chilli Peppers while you are laying on your back, with your legs in the air, in a slow scissor motion, and doing something not quite unlike an awful crunch.

Keep doing things like this, while your muscles twitch and burn and hurt, for an hour.

Then you go home, and your collarbone hurts like mad.

Now, I KNOW I haven’t broken my collarbone, because there has been no impact, and no one rammed into me with a small Rugby team when I was in the QFC afterward. Ergo, it’s not actually the bone.

It *isn’t* actually the bone.

Apparently if you’re a woman, you’re used to having these semi-pendulous things hanging from your chest, they cause your head and neck to angle forward if you’re not paying attention. Then, add the Personal Pain Olympics that is Group Cyntergy — further pulling forward (again you’re not paying attention though you should be). Viola, strained musculature around the collarbone.

I will go back, but I think it’s time to find other other classes.

Whimper Whimper

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I met with the surgeon today.

Apparently, adenocarcinoma sucks and what sucks about it is its metastatic rate (it gets big and ugly fast) and its recursion rate (it comes back, even if you get the whole tumor; you have to make sure you have “clean margins”* and even that is no guarantee). What sucks particular in Kumi’s case is that the tumor is right on, and around, her sphincter. I realize that may be too much information for you, but as the surgeon put it: there is a very good chance that she is going to be incontinent for life if he has to snip both nerves that control the sphincter.

The normal surgical method to ensure clean margins is to excise a gratuitous amount of tissue around the tumor — so if it were on her back, for example, he’d cut out a good half-inch all the way around, and just sew it up. But because it’s on her sphincter, he can’t do that. And if he is trying to get as close as possible to the edge of the tumor, it means the chances of getting good clean margins goes way down.

Further adding to the equation is that “rest of her life” — statistically, dogs with adenocarcinoma have an average of 8 months post-surgery. Without surgery she has a “few weeks to a few months”. There is no more accurate way to look at it, because of the nature of the cancer. And with the recursion rate post-surgery, and her age (she’s 9yrs 9mos, the average Malamute lives to 9-11 years), it wasn’t a good sign that the usually optimistic surgeon was telling me about all the tough decisions he’s had to make with his pets. (Veterinary surgeons are among the most optimistic people in the world — they have to be, because of all of the complications that surgery brings). He kept bringing up “quality of life” and “there’s no good way to go” and “I tell my wife that one of these days we’ll be lucky and have one of our pets go peacefully in their sleep”. 

*Clean margins – they excise the tumor and send it to the lab. The idea is as they slice it, all of the exterior edges should have noncancerous cells.

Swim, Bike, Walk

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Thanks to the new fancy gym (yes, they made it better, and I will be blathering at length about how wonderful the gym is… later) I am back to swimming, and back to ENJOYING it, which is more important. I swam my half mile yesterday in 22 minutes, not bad for someone who quit swimming for 8 months.

I am not, however, back to running.

I got new shoes. They fit very nicely. But after about a mile and a half of running — hell, let’s be honest, “jogging” (my pace is nowhere near where it used to be, and I think I can speedwalk at the same rate) — my knee hurts, my shin hurts, and I hurt. The change in my gait is noticeable on a treadmill or on pavement, it literally *sounds different* when my right foot hits the ground than my left.  I’ve given it 3 good runs, between 1 and 3 miles each, and they end with me either limping, or walking a significant portion, or both.

At some point when running the half last year, I did something to that knee and I think in my bike training I cemented whatever it was. My kneecap, which I used to get taped for running, is very much different on my left than on my right. Looking down, my right kneecap is pretty flat, a normal kneecap. My left one is at about a 25 degree angle. It doesn’t bother me to walk, or swim, or bike (within the first 60 miles), but running? Running is a whole new branch of hell. Frankly, I do not wish to go back to physical therapy. I think the sports med doctor hit it on the nail when he gave me the choice: you can do phys therapy and finish out this run, and then you have to decide what you are going to do. You either keep up with physical therapy and keep running, or you don’t, but there will be no half measures.

I just didn’t realize he really meant “no half measures” included such previously thought small jaunts as a 3-mile run. I can remember a time where a 3-mile run was the “short run” for the week — and I can remember enjoying it. I figured he was talking about half-marathons.

Even the wonderful Music of Kevin that I got a year plus back is not helping overcome it. Instead of the beauteous endorphin rush I used to get two miles in, I get more and more pissed off, more and more angry, and more and more pain as I run. I am not, in short, having fun.

I Have Decided: no more running.

I’ll do tri’s, I absolutely will: but I will not do runs. I will speedwalk or jog and then walk (Because, having resolved to walk, I will see others run and feel all peppy in the moment). I will attempt to make up the time in the bike and swim parts, which I will enjoy. And I will take advantage of my new fancy gym, with its bevy of classes (including pilates and kickboxing).

I am not running anymore. There, I’ve said it twice, in a public forum. This time it’s real…

PS: Mindimus, I will still do the Rock and Roll Half with you… speedwalking 🙂